Today in Paris, two Italians, Valentino’s Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, gave new life to that down-home American icon: the patchwork quilt. Running the length of a floor-grazing gown, the quilt patterns were abstracted to the brink of pop. And they brought to mind an earlier, and similarly extraordinary, quilt metamorphosis, realized by Gloria Vanderbilt and Wyatt Copper at home in 1970. It’s not surprising that patchwork quilts would appeal to a collage artist like Vanderbilt, but the bravado had unexpected results: “Isn’t it extraordinary,” she said at the time, “how something as simple as quilts from America suddenly begin to relate to Russia and the East, to become exotic and mysterious when used in a certain way.”

“Gloria the Great’s Patchwork Bedroom,” photographed by Horst P. Horst, appeared in the February 1, 1970 issue of Vogue.

Far left: Close-up, the patchwork floor covering of highly varnished, square and rectangular pieces of brightly patterned fabric, has the feeling of old-fashioned linoleum in a Mondrian-gone-mad pattern. Above left: The enamel-white mantelpiece displays one of Mrs. Cooper's favorite pieces—a Victorian wedding memento with bride and groom figures in a garden whose flowers and trees are made of tiny shells. The English Chinese-style desk, left, is an old family heirloom as is the Queen Anne chest which conceals a television set. In the foreground are a petit- point-covered 17th-century French bench and Elizabethan jewelry chest, embroidered with seed pearls. Below left: The room is entered through its own little closet-lined foyer covered with red and white gingham fabric. Above the sofa is one of Mrs. Cooper's collages of the Virgin and Child. The ivory figure of the Virgin and Child is French 14th century. Above: The draperies were originally supposed to be lined but were not to retain their translucent, stained- glass effect. Near left: A collage of a cavalier by Mrs. Cooper.